Blake (right) recites the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of a meeting of the Marine Corps Veterans Association in Sacramento, Calif. Blake joined the group to keep in touch with both old and young Marine veterans in the area who support one another.

Michelle Johnson, an English professor at Sierra College, has been an avid supporter of the campus veterans programs. She started a "Boot to Books" class to give former members of the military the extra push they need as they transition to civilian life.

Crystal Turner, a Marine veteran now attending classes at Sierra College, helps her 1 1/2-year-old daughter, Marley Rose, out of a car. Turner is balancing classes and working at the vets center on campus with being a full-time mother.

Marley Rose looks up at her mother while playing in the kitchen of their family home near Sacramento. Crystal Turner is mostly raising her two children on her own because her husband, who is also a Marine, lives two hours away near his base.

Jay Blake (left), who served multiple tours in Iraq as a Marine, rides the elevator with his fellow students in the library at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif. Blake, who has struggled since returning home, says he finally settled into his studies with the help of Catherine Morris, an academic adviser who works with the vets on campus.

Marine veteran Crystal Turner, a student at Sierra College, holds her daughter, Marley Rose, while she tries to coax her son, Michael, into finishing a walk in the park near their home in Sacramento.

David Gilkey
/ NPR

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Originally published on June 11, 2012 10:55 pm

Most American troops have left Iraq, and many have left Afghanistan. Now more than half a million of them have left the service — and they're going to college. Some vets say the transition is like landing on another planet, but they aren't the only ones struggling: The college staffs are, too.

At Sierra Community College, about an hour from Sacramento in Rocklin, Calif., there are hundreds of new kinds of students mixed in with the 18-year-olds fresh out of high school. Like James Reimers, who just turned 25. He was running patrols in Baghdad when many of his classmates were in the fifth grade.

"Some people walking around, they have like, Mohawks, and a nose ring, and like, a chain coming out of their ear," Reimers says. "It makes you feel like you don't fit in here. Just, like, what's going on?"

Or 37-year-old Jay Blake. He has short hair and his arm is covered with warrior tattoos. He says he is struggling at Sierra.

"When I was in Iraq ... there was a mission," Blake says. "Walking around with a rifle and telling people, 'You go here, you do this, and you do that,' and if they don't, I have the opportunity to go ahead and hit them upside the head with my rifle if I want to," he says laughing, "You know, but I just can't do that" on Sierra's campus. "How do I interact?"

Classroom Struggles

Veterans started flooding college campuses at the end of World War II. Three years ago, Congress expanded the program for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Since then, the Department of Veterans Affairs says more than 600,000 of them have gone to schools on the GI Bill. The VA doesn't have exact statistics, but surveys suggest that at least a quarter of those vets are attending community colleges, like Sierra.

"The guys [are] feeling lost," says Catherine Morris, one of Sierra's main academic advisers. The school has roughly 800 vets on its campus among its 20,000 students. "And I had so many guys telling me that they were actually more afraid of going to college than they were in combat."

In Michelle Johnson's English class, the room is packed with about 30 students. The four vets in the class are clumped together in the corner, like their own mini-platoon, including Reimers, who later says he is not sure how to relate to the other students in the class. Vets like Reimers are haunted by their memories of war.

"One day in Baghdad ... there [were] five of our guys and an interpreter in a Bradley [tank]," Reimers says. "And they rolled over, I think it was a 200-pound bomb, and it just blew it to pieces, and none of them survived, obviously. And we had to go out there and pick up what was left — the remains of the fallen soldiers."

Reimers says the only way he survived was to shut down part of his brain. But now he's studying mechanical engineering, and he needs to turn his brain back on.

"But sometimes my brain doesn't want to. I look at the words and I read them and then I just, it doesn't compute at all," he says.

Balancing New Civilian Life

There are also vets on campus like Crystal Turner — already a young mother. Turner, 24, went to Iraq while in the Marine Corps and married another Marine.

She says she didn't return from the war with post-traumatic stress, but she's overwhelmed trying to piece together a new life. She and her two young children live in a tiny apartment, with so many toys scattered on the carpet that it is difficult to walk. Her husband is still in the Marines and lives near his base about two hours away. So Turner says she's basically raising their two kids by herself. Plus she works 25 hours a week. Plus she's taking a full course load at Sierra.

"I don't really have that many relationships with other students that are not vets. I don't. I feel like I just don't fit in with them," she says.

Unprepared Schools Present Challenges

When vets from Iraq and Afghanistan started pouring onto college campuses, veterans' advocates assumed that colleges would be ready. The military's own studies show that hundreds of thousands of vets have come home with mental health problems or traumatic brain injuries, or both. Many others are struggling mothers like Turner. But surveys by education groups show that most colleges haven't done much to help them. Rodrigo Garcia, chairman of Student Veterans of America and assistant director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, says he's worried.

"I am a bit apprehensive. And I would say that I am a bit peeved that more colleges and universities are not doing more," he says.

Back at Sierra, academic adviser Morris — who also served in the Marines — was upset that her own college wasn't doing more. A few years ago, she went to the executives who ran the college and asked to set up a special program to support veterans. But they told her no, citing budget reasons.

When Willy Duncan, the new president of the college, took over last year, he told her the budget was cut even more.

"We've essentially had to cut access. We've essentially had to reduce the number of students that we could serve, so we are turning students away," he says.

Duncan says he wants to fund a major program for vets.

"I think it's hugely important for us to do it."

But Duncan says, so far, the only kind of support that can be provided is moral support. The California Legislature has slashed college budgets across the state. Sierra has cut teachers. It has cut salaries and benefits. It has eliminated whole courses.

"We have 800 vets on campus, which I would consider a large cohort. But we have 20,000 students that we do have to serve. And we can't serve vets at the expense of other students — we need to be able to serve them all," he says.

A Call For Duty

So Morris got together with a colleague and a handful of students, and they decided to create their own veterans program. They persuaded officials to let them share a resource center for athletes and other student groups inside the college's library. So now there's a tiny office where vets can get advice on how to apply for VA benefits. There are desks with computers, where vets can do schoolwork or email. There are a mini-refrigerator and some shelves stocked with food.

There's also a "relaxation room" that's just big enough for two chairs and a lamp. Morris says the vets come here when they're about to blow, and they turn off the lamp and shut the door.

"One of the guys was in a typing class. And because of all the noise, and the type-type-type-type-type, and all the activity, he would sometimes get an anxiety attack. Which is very common amongst my vets. When you think you have a classroom of 30 people, sometimes guys will just pick up and leave the class before a full-on panic attack," says Morris.

Morris also started holding workshops for the faculty to help them understand problems vets have. She got the college to let vets sign up for classes before other students, so they don't have the stress of getting bumped. She persuaded the VA to send two counselors to Sierra, one day every week, so vets can have therapy sessions right on campus. And Morris has persuaded her bosses to let her work almost full time giving academic counseling just to vets. For one thing, they need it to figure out the GI Bill.

On a recent morning, Morris was trying to explain the rules to a new student, Jason Thomas, who had served as a Marine. Thomas was learning that the GI Bill that Congress passed is incredibly complicated. If you don't sign up for the right kind of courses or take them at the right time, the VA will cut off your money.

"So, if you have an eight-week class, then normally the VA determines that six units is full time," Morris says, pointing at a dense-looking chart, "although it all depends exactly, because you have to follow this formula: You have to add up all the days, count every single day in the period and divide it by seven, and if you have a remainder of three, you have this many weeks; if you have a remainder of four, it's this many weeks," she says, looking at Thomas to see if he's following. He laughs.

The experience of Sierra Community College suggests that any college could create a veterans program, if — and Duncan says this is a big if — there is at least one staff member who is passionate about helping them.

One of the most striking aspects of Sierra's program is that it's so simple. Yet many — if not most — colleges don't have even that. "I think one of the things that makes our program successful is the fact that we have a vets' counselor — that's Catherine [Morris]," says Duncan. "You know, without kind of a champion paying attention to vets, it's hard for a college to kind of grapple with that."

Most students who go to community college attend one close to home. But some veterans said that they moved from another part of the state specifically for Sierra's program.

Reimers says he checked out other community colleges, but they didn't have a clue about the challenges vets face.

"Sierra College, I checked them out, and their veterans program ... appealed to me; it just kind of popped. Just making it easier for vets to go to school," Reimers says.

And guess what, he says, he just received his grades: two A's and two B's.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

I'm Melissa Block. And we begin this hour with a story about life after war. Most American troops have left Iraq. Many have left Afghanistan. And now, more than half a million have left the service to go to college. Some veterans say the transition is like landing on another planet. NPR's Daniel Zwerdling reports that these vets aren't the only ones struggling. College staffs are having trouble adapting too.

DANIEL ZWERDLING, BYLINE: There are two faces now of Sierra Community College. Sierra is about an hour from Sacramento in California. And one of its faces looks and sounds like a traditional community college. There's a women's softball game on a recent Saturday.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Today's games feature the senior college Wolverines.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)

ZWERDLING: Most students at the game are the kind you'd expect to find at a community college. They came to Sierra straight from high school.

CASEY: Casey(ph), 18.

ASHLEY: Ashley(ph), 20.

ZIRI: Ziri(ph), 18.

ZWERDLING: But now, here's the other face of Sierra.

JAMES REIMERS: James Reimers, 24. I joined the Army right out of high school, 2005.

ZWERDLING: Reimers was running patrols in Baghdad while a lot of his classmates at Sierra were in fifth grade.

REIMERS: Some people walking around, they have like Mohawks and a chain coming out of their ear, and it makes you feel like you don't fit in here because it's just, like, what's going on?

ZWERDLING: Or talk to this student sitting on the quadrangle. He's 37.

JAY BLAKE: Jay Blake, veteran of the Marine Corps.

ZWERDLING: Blake has short hair. His arm is covered with warrior tattoos.

BLAKE: When I was in Iraq, you know, there was a mission, and, you know, me walking around with a rifle and telling people you go here, you do this and you do that, and if they don't, you know, I have the opportunity to go ahead and hit them upside the head with my rifle if I want to. You know, but I just can't do that, so it's like how do I interact?

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

ZWERDLING: Veterans started flooding college campuses at the end of World War II. The military made this newsreel about the GI Bill back in 1944.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: You mean, he can get any kind of education he wants?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Now you're getting the idea, any kind of education and in any part of the country.

ZWERDLING: Congress expanded the program three years ago for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the VA says since then more 600,000 of them have gone to schools on the GI Bill. And Catherine Morris says she could see that many were in trouble.

CATHERINE MORRIS: I was seeing the guys feeling lost.

ZWERDLING: Morris is one of Sierra's main academic advisers. They have roughly 800 vets on Sierra's campus out of 20,000 students.

MORRIS: And I had so many guys telling me that they were actually more afraid of going to college than they were in combat.

ZWERDLING: For instance, I stopped by Michelle Johnson's English class one morning.

MICHELLE JOHNSON: All right. So here, I want to let you know that I'm passing out your sheets and rather than going through and correcting everything what I did was...

ZWERDLING: The room is packed, maybe 30 students here, and the four vets in the class are clumped together in the corner, like their own mini-platoon. One of them is James Reimers. He says later what's he going to talk about with regular students. Their main drama is their girlfriend didn't text them.

REIMERS: One day in Baghdad, we had - there was five of our guys and an interpreter in a Bradley, and they rolled over a - I think it was a 2000-pound bomb, and it just blew it to pieces, and none of them survived, obviously. And we had to go out there and pick up what was left, the remains of the fallen soldiers.

ZWERDLING: Reimers says the only way he survived was he shut down part of his brain, but now he's studying mechanical engineering, and he needs to turn his brain back on.

REIMERS: But sometimes, my brain doesn't want to. I look at the words, and I read them and then I just - it doesn't compute at all.

ZWERDLING: Or talk to a vet like Crystal Turner. She went to Iraq in the Marine Corps. She married another Marine. And now, she's struggling with school too. I meet with Turner in her tiny apartment. There are toys everywhere. There's hardly room to walk.

ZWERDLING: Turner is 24, and she says she didn't come back from the war with post-traumatic stress, but she's overwhelmed trying to piece together a new life. Her husband is still in the Marines, and he lives near his base around two hours away. So Turner says she's basically raising their two kids by herself. Plus, she works 25 hours a week. Plus, she's taking a full load at Sierra College. To what extent do you relate to other students?

TURNER: I don't really have that many relationships with other students that are not vets. I don't...

ZWERDLING: How come?

TURNER: I feel like I just don't fit in with them.

ZWERDLING: When vets from Iraq and Afghanistan started pouring onto college campuses, veterans' advocates assumed that colleges would be ready. But surveys by education groups show that most colleges haven't done much to help them. Rodrigo Garcia is chairman of a national group called Student Veterans of America.

RODRIGO GARCIA: I am a bit apprehensive. And I would say that I am a bit peeved that more colleges and universities are not doing more.

ZWERDLING: Back at Sierra, Catherine Morris was peeved that her own college wasn't doing more. Morris is the academic adviser, she used to be a Marine herself. And a few years ago, she went to the executives who ran the college. She said we need to set up a special program to support veterans, and they told her forget it. Have you looked at the budget? Then a new president took over last year, Willy Duncan. He says the budget's been cut even worse.

WILLY DUNCAN: Yeah. It's been substantial. There's no doubt about it. It's - we've essentially had to cut access. We've essentially had to reduce the number of students that we could serve, so we are turning students away.

ZWERDLING: Duncan says he wants to fund a major program for vets, but so far, pretty much the main help he can give is moral support because the California Legislature has slashed college budgets across the state. Sierra has cut teachers. They've cut salaries and benefits. They've eliminated whole courses.

DUNCAN: We have 800 vets on campus, which I would consider that a large cohort. But we have 20,000 students, so we've got a lot of students that we do have to serve. And we can't serve vets at the expense of other students. We need to be able to serve them all.

ZWERDLING: So Catherine Morris got together with a colleague and a handful of students, and they decided, OK, let's create a veterans program ourselves.

MORRIS: All right. We're in the Veterans Resource Center. This is the fourth floor of the library here at Sierra College.

ZWERDLING: My guide on this afternoon is a vet named Eric Theeler. Officials told Catherine Morris that there wasn't a single room on campus that the vets could call their own. On the other hand, there was this resource center in the library, which the athletes get to use. Morris convinced them at least let veterans share it. So now there's a tiny office where vets can get advice and how to apply for VA benefits. There are desks with computers. There's a mini-fridge and some shelves stocked with food.

MORRIS: The snack shack, that is full. There's a happy vet so...

(LAUGHTER)

MORRIS: And then we have the relaxation room.

ZWERDLING: The relaxation room is tiny, just big enough for two chairs from IKEA and a lamp. Catherine Morris says vets come here when they're about to blow, and they turn off the lamp and shut the door.

MORRIS: Like one of the guys was in a typing class. And because of all the noise and the type-type-type-type-type, he would sometimes get - have an anxiety attack and which is very common amongst my vets.

ZWERDLING: The sound of a computer keyboard.

MORRIS: Well, yeah, when you think you've got a classroom of 30 people, sometimes guys will just pick up and leave the class before a full-on panic attack.

ZWERDLING: And then the teacher would get angry because he taught the student was just skipping class. So Morris started holding workshops for the faculty to help them understand vets' problems. She got the college to let vets sign up for classes before other students do, so they don't have the stress of getting bumped. Morris persuaded the VA to send two counselors to Sierra, one day every week, so vets can have therapy sessions right on campus. And Morris has convinced her bosses to let her work almost full time giving academic counseling just to vets. For one thing, they need it to figure out the GI Bill.

MORRIS: All right. Do you have a particular goal in mind? Are you kind of exploring, kind of give me an idea?

JASON THOMAS: Well, I really want to get into welding and then...

ZWERDLING: On a recent morning, Morris was trying to explain the rules to a new student named Jason Thomas. He recently left the Marines and he was learning that the GI Bill that Congress passed is incredibly complicated. If you don't sign up for the exact right kind of courses or take them at exactly the right time, the VA will cut off your money.

MORRIS: So if you have, like, an eight week class, then normally the VA determines that six units is full time, although it all depends exactly because you have to follow this formula. You have to add up all the days, count every single day in the period and divide it by seven and, if you have a remainder of three, it's this many weeks. If you have a remainder of four, it's this many weeks.

One thing that's really striking about your program for vets is that it really is so simple, but most colleges don't have that.

DUNCAN: That's true. Yeah. And I'm not sure why. I think one of the things that makes our program successful is the fact that we have a vets' counselor. That's Catherine. You know, without kind of a champion, it's hard for a college to kind of grapple with that.

ZWERDLING: Most students who go to a community college attend the one that happens to be close to home, but some veterans told me that they moved from another part of the state specifically to come to Sierra.

Remember James Reimers? He was the soldier who shut down his brain in Iraq. Reimers says he checked out other community colleges, but they didn't have a clue about that.

REIMERS: Sierra College - I checked them out and their veterans' programs just, like, appealed to me. It just kind of popped. Just making it easier for vets to go to school.

ZWERDLING: Reimers says guess what? And he laughs sheepishly. He just got his grades. Two A's and two B's.